Sessions has thrown down his gage, declaring war on occasional transparency from government leakers. Indirectly, that war will include members of the media as casualties.

Shakespeare penned the best response for taking up Sessions’ gage:

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;

In case you don’t know the original sense of “Havoc:”

The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare’s parlance ‘the dogs of war’) to pillage and chaos. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war

It’s on all of us to create enough chaos to protect leakers and members of the media who publish their leaks.

Observations – Not Instructions

Data access: Phishing emails succeed 33% of the time. Do they punish would-be leakers who fall for phishing emails?

Exflitration: Tracing select documents to a leaker is commonplace. How do you trace an entire server disk? The larger and more systematic the data haul, the greater the difficulty in pinning the leak on particular documents. (Back to school specials often include multi-terabyte drives.)